In the last several years, the Internet has evolved towards widespread sharing of all forms of information. The ease of creating a public website has led to a culture of individual self-publishing and co-operative publishing in the form of blogs, podcasts, wikis, and photo and video sharing. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services have allowed the expansion of the Internet's communication capabilities. Sophisticated on-demand content provisioning has enabled the delivery of all forms of media across the Internet, including traditional media forms, such as newspapers, radio, television, and movies. Greater bandwidth has moved traditionally local file backups and mirrors to locations that are accessed over a network. In addition, the Internet's peer-to-peer infrastructure has given rise to real-time data transmission as well as file sharing.
These changes have led to increased heterogeneity of media types and traffic, increased network complexity, reduced latency requirements, and increased bandwidth requirements. Often, network traffic seamlessly transitions through multiple wireless Local Area Network (LAN) standards (e.g., 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n), wireless Personal Area Network (PAN) standards such as Bluetooth® (Bluetooth is a registered trademark of Bluetooth Sig, Inc. of Delaware), wired standards such as Ethernet, and even storage area networks (SANs) and any associated network storage protocols. Furthermore, network traffic itself is composed of many different types of data, which are sent using various packet transmission patterns and protocols. For example, streaming video traffic is transmitted using a different protocol from VoIP traffic. Additionally, network applications, from weather simulations and telemetry to streaming media and VoIP, are demanding increased bandwidth and reduced latency from the Internet.
To operate in a heterogeneous, complex environment and meet bandwidth and latency requirements, a network connection is customized to handle different traffic patterns, types of data transmitted, and types of transmission media. However, before customization takes place, the network connection is characterized appropriately. For example, multiple Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) congestion control algorithms exist, with each algorithm designed to handle a particular set of network conditions. However, to effectively use a particular TCP congestion control algorithm, the network conditions are determined, and the appropriate congestion control algorithm is selected for the established network conditions. Mechanisms are also put in place to deal with changing network conditions, traffic patterns, and network usage once the TCP congestion control algorithm is implemented.